Biographical Note

International Voluntary Services (IVS) was founded in 1953 with the support of the U.S. Technical Cooperation Agency, today known as USAID. The U.S. Technical Cooperation Agency sought to foster the development of private voluntary organizations to supply educated volunteers to work in developing countries. A committee that included Mennonites and Brethren experienced with overseas relief work conceptulaized the organization that ultimately became IVS.

The first IVS volunteers were stationed in Egypt in 1954. Within two years, IVS placed volunteers in Iraq, Laos, Jordan, and Vietnam to work with villagers to improve agricultural production, education, and health.

For nearly twenty years, IVS expanded its geographical locations and its projects while remaining dependent upon funding from USAID. In 1973, IVS was asked to find funding apart from USAID funds. In spite of its financial problems, the organization continued to grow, beginning programs in Bangladesh, Ecuador, Bolivia, and other countries and expanding its services to include disaster relief.

In the 1980s and 1990s, IVS began consolidating programs and placing volunteers as workers with non-government organizations. Attempts to restructure the organization financially were unsuccessful, as IVS metamorphosized from a grassroots volunteer organization into an agency that administered sub-grants on behalf of USAID.

In its final years, much IVS work focused on AIDS education and prevention in southeast Asia. By the late 1990s, however, only three strong programs remained: Ecuador, Bolivia, and Bangaldesh. Before the dissolution of IVS, these programs were converted into national NGOs. IVS was dissolved in 2003.

Use Restrictions:
Researchers are responsible for using in accordance with 17 U.S.C. Copyright owned by the Mennonite Church USA Archives.

Acquisition Source:
Perry Bush / IVS

Related Materials:
The Rauner Special Collections Library at Dartmouth College (Hanover, NH) holds the papers of Don Cohon, who served with IVS in Vietnam from 1965 to 1967. The papers document Cohon's term of service as well as decades of post-IVS work with southeast Asian refugees in the United States. For more information please see https://ead.dartmouth.edu/html/ms1347_fullguide.html.

Box and Folder Listing

This series comprises the records of IVS's governing bodies. The series is largely arranged chronologically, although the merging of two separate files of meeting mintues resulted in some deviation from a strict chronological order. The minutes include staff reports, budget information, policy discussions, and other documents generated in governing IVS.

Box 1: Minutes, 1953-1964

Box 2: Minutes, 1953-1970

Box 3: Minutes, 1970-1981

This box includes the minutes to the "Harpers Ferry" meeting.

Box 4: Minutes, 1982-1992

Box 5: Minutes, 1993-1997

Box 6: Minutes, 1998-2001

Series 2: Project Files, 1952-2002

This series documents the work IVS oversaw in developing countries around the world. Most of this series consists of reports written by volunteers, field directors, regional directors, and other IVS personnel. The project files were pieced together from a number of different types of files -- alumni files, report files, field director files, etc. -- and therefore are not consistently arranged or described. The earliest reports are filed chronologically. Later materials are organized alphabetically by name of country or region. Under each country or region name, researchers will find materials ordered roughly by date, project name / region, or volunteer last name.

These files document the adminsitration of IVS, particularly its efforts to grapple with funding and organizational difficulties in the 1980s and 1990s. Contents include articles of incorporation and by-laws, communications from IVS executive directors to field directors, reports evaluating IVS as an organization, workplace, and private volunteer organization, and policy and procedure documents. Researchers will also find speculations on the future or IVS during uncertain economic times for the organization.

This series contains alumni directories, material related to alumni reunions, and material donated by Roderick McCrae documenting his volunteer service in Laos and his work for IVS Washington in the 1960s.

Box 53: Alumni Materials, 1963-2010

Box 54: Alumni Materials, 1963-1969

Series 6: Photographs, 1960-1995

Divided into three subseries: negatives, slides, and prints. Negatives and slides are poorly labeled, often only identified by country or region. Prints are somewhat better identified. The series also includes several pictorial reports and scrapbooks.

Audiovideo presentations on the Village Volunteer Program and Small Entrepreneurship in Bangladesh, undated; Interview (in French) with IVS volunteer and prisoner of war, Marc Cayer, 1973; Reel to reel recordings (also transferred to CD) of Laotian folk music collected by IVS volunteer Henry Holmes, 1962-1964